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Terms of Use

Works by Fiona Connor, Katie Herzog and The Archive of Privatized Experience

Jan 19, 2019 to Feb 16, 2019

Reception:

Saturday, January 19, 2019 - 2:00pm to 5:00pm

The following is a disclaimer, a contract, the rules you consent to. You are complying when you read this, or when you click a box, or when you breathe. You are participating whether you are in a space with these words or the space created by them. What are your terms of use? How do you define the structures around you? How do you trace and sculpt their boundaries so there is room for yourself?

Terms of Use is an exhibition of works by Fiona Connor, Katie Herzog, and The Archive of Privatized Experience. Each object displayed uses strategies to embody infrastructure at a human scale. The 1:1 models give form to public and private systems that shape the way individuals act in physical space as well as the digital realm. The artworks represent functional forms but do not fulfill their original use. In this manner, the artists create new visual terms that can be used to approach the unseen ways tools and institutions affect the individual. The works facilitate a consideration of sharing systems in a landscape that may be determined as much by participation online as it is IRL (in real life).

Fiona Connor’s Support Structures are bronze casts of shelves that reproduce and abstract elements from private space. Connor transforms functional and commonplace furniture sourced from her friends into reverent objects by casting the shelf, screws and brackets as one complete article. The owners of the original shelves describe the purposes they served in phone audio memos available in the gallery. Each artwork hangs at the height at which the originals were installed. Through placement Connor brings attention to the specific way spaces are transformed and organized by the objects they contain.

Katie Herzog’s 10 foot high, 84 foot long Rubbing The Internet Archive records the architectural details of the exterior of San Francisco’s Internet Archive building. Through the surrealist/ automatic art tradition of frottage, Herzog reproduces the material qualities of an institution that is largely encountered online. The Internet Archive is a digital library that gives free access to the public, provides a platform for individuals to upload content, archives web history, and advocates for a free and open Internet. Herzog created the to-scale image of the headquarters of the institution by rubbing wax over textile interfacing on the exterior of the building. Variation in darkness and line quality simultaneously record the facade and methods of the record maker. Through analog process Herzog traces a legacy of the stewardship of knowledge from care taking of objects and manuscripts to the preservation and dissemination of digital artifacts.

Visitors are invited to lounge, read, or socialize in the exhibition during gallery hours. Guests can elect to check their Internet devices at the reception desk to experience the artwork without digital distractions. For the duration of the exhibition The Archive of Privatized Experience will pay participants for each hour they spend with the work without internet-based technology at the same rate advertisers on social media pay sharing platforms for that unit of an individual user’s time. Audiences can also engage in the project on the University Art Gallery’s Instagram stories @uag_ucirvine. Viewers are invited to participate in this research-based performance through voting and contributing text to the project.

Curated by Corrie Siegel

M.F.A. Candidate in The Department of Art with a Concentration in Critical and Curatorial Studies

On view in the Contemporary Arts Center Gallery (Bldg 721 on campus map)